


A Human Way to Fly

by EHyde



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-27
Updated: 2013-05-27
Packaged: 2017-12-13 03:19:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/819346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EHyde/pseuds/EHyde
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After working a job on the Oregon coast, Dean and Cas go kite-flying. Post-season-8.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Human Way to Fly

The three of them stood silent on the shore, watching the lone figure vanish beneath the waves. Finally, Cas broke the silence. “I don’t see how you can possibly find this life rewarding.” He turned abruptly and began walking up the beach.

“Cas!” Dean called after him, but didn’t follow. “I don’t get it,” he muttered. “He said he _wanted_ to be a hunter, didn’t he?”

“That doesn’t mean it’ll be easy for him,” said Sam.

“Yeah, well, he’s not exactly _making_ it easy, is he?” Dean was trying to help Cas—they both were—but sometimes it felt like Cas was actively working against everything they tried to do for him.

“Just—give him some time, okay? This case wasn’t easy for him—you know that.”

Dean sighed in exasperation. “Come on, let’s go.” It was starting to rain.

 

Cas wasn’t waiting by the Impala. “Fuck.”

“He must’ve decided to walk back to the motel. It’s not too far.”

“In the rain?”

Sam shrugged. “I don’t think he cares.”

Sure, he didn’t care now. Later, when he was cold and wet and couldn’t just zap himself dry, he’d care, and he’d act like it happened because he was human and not because he decided to take a walk in the pouring rain without an umbrella—

Neither of them spoke for a few minutes.

“This was not a hard case!” said Dean, finally. “This was an _easy_ case. We didn’t even have to kill the selkie. She got to … go home. _Fuck_.”

 

They found Cas waiting back at the motel, standing beside the window that overlooked the beach. His clothes were soaked through. “Your father wrote of selkies in his journal,” he said. “He said that men would steal their skins, bind them to their human form. I … thought I could relate.”

Sam looked at Dean, then back to Cas. “We’ll figure this out, Cas. We found the selkie’s skin, we can track down your Grace. It’ll just … take more time.”

“Couldn’t you see?” Cas asked. “She didn’t _want_ to go home. She hated the land, but she wanted to stay, because—” He broke off. “She only went back to the sea because she lost the one thing that was keeping her here.”

“Yeah, well—” Dean shrugged. “Love makes people do strange things.”

“You should really dry off, Cas,” Sam said. “You don’t want to catch a cold. Take a hot shower, put on some dry clothes, get Dean to make you some hot chocolate or something. I’m gonna go get us some dinner.”

 

“Sam’s right,” said Dean, when Sam had left. “You’ve got crap for an immune system. You really should put on some dry clothes.”

“I don’t mean to complain so much,” said Cas. “Humans are marvelous creatures. I’m just … unaccustomed to being at the mercy of the physical.”

“If you took better care of yourself, you’d have less to complain about.”

“Dean, I’m afraid.”

“Afraid of what? Of being stuck as a human?”

“I’m afraid of losing what I was. Afraid that if I learn how to let _human_ feel normal, I’ll no longer be myself. After all the times Naomi was inside my head, after everything that was done to me, after everything that I did to myself—Dean, I can’t let myself become someone else. Not again.”

“That’s not—” Dean began, but Cas cut him off.

“That’s what I was afraid of up until today. But the selkie—she never forgot who she was, never forgot where she came from, and all it meant was in the end, she had nowhere to call home.”

“ _We’re_ your home, Cas.”

“I know that. But if something happened to you—I don’t want to be left with nothing. I think Heaven ceased to be my home long before I fell, but I don’t belong here, either. Not unless I change. So these fears—they’re not really compatible.”

“Changing who you are isn’t always bad,” said Dean. “I mean, me as of five years ago wouldn’t have let a monster go free, and five years ago I wouldn’t have—”

“Wouldn’t have what?”

“I wouldn’t have cared how falling affected you, all right? I care, Cas, and I want to help, but I can’t do anything if you don’t put some effort into it yourself.”

Cas hesitated. “If there's some way to find a balance—”

“I’ll help you find it. And you can start by not making human existence any more miserable than it has to be. Dry clothes. I’ll make hot chocolate.”

 

Sam returned with dinner, and he also brought back something else. “You gonna tell us what’s in the tube?” Dean asked.

“I, uh, bought a kite,” said Sam. “I remembered Cas talking about his favorite place in heaven, and when I saw people flying kites on the beach today, I thought—” He shrugged. “Thought you might like to try it out yourself,” he said to Cas. “Instead of just watching.”

Dean thought that Cas looked like flying a kite on the beach was the last thing he wanted to do, but— “Yeah, let’s do that,” said Dean. “We deserve a break, right?”

“It stopped raining,” said Sam. “So after we eat we can walk down to the beach.” He’d already taken the kite out of its packaging and was starting to assemble it.

Dean frowned. The blue and black nylon was stretched in a wide triangle shape, not the diamond he’d expected, and it looked like it had two strings. “Are you sure you’re putting it together right?”

“It’s a stunt kite,” said Sam. “You’re supposed to be able to steer it, do tricks and stuff.”

“Huh.” That actually sounded kind of cool.

 

“Want me to give it a try first? Take it up for a test drive?”

Cas nodded. He still didn’t seem very enthusiastic about the whole thing. “Sam means well,” he said. “But there wasn’t anything special about the kite in that man’s heaven. It was what the kite meant to him that made it what it was.” Sam was out of earshot, holding the kite ready to launch at the opposite end of its strings.

“So today we’ll find out what a kite means to you.” Dean nodded at Sam, who let go of the kite. It caught the wind and sped upwards…and immediately veered to the right, crashing down in a nosedive into the sand. Crap, he’d been distracted. Sam righted the kite and got it ready to launch again—same thing.

“You can’t just hold on and let the wind do as it pleases,” said Cas from behind him. “You’ve got to give it some direction.” Dean was ready this time. He pulled on the left string to balance it out, only to have the kite take a nosedive to the left instead. “But you can’t force it where you want it to go, either. Work _with_ the wind.”

“If you’re not gonna do it yourself, stop being a backseat driver,” said Dean. Flying a kite was supposed to be easy, wasn’t it?

“Dean, please believe that I know how flying works.”

… right. Okay, one more try. It was in the air, and it was staying in the air, that was good, but the wind kept pulling it from side to side, and he wasn’t getting the balance right, and all in all it was a very shaky and unsteady thing, not at all like what that peaceful memory of a kite in heaven must have been like—

Dean felt Castiel’s hands in his. Cas was standing behind him, reaching around to grasp Dean’s hands as they held the kite strings. The kite held steady and Dean could feel Cas react to each minuscule movement of the wind. Cas knew what he was doing. Dean relaxed his grip as Cas guided the kite into a slow downward arc, then finally let go and ducked out under the kite strings, standing back to watch as Cas led the kite in more and more complicated patterns across the sky.

“It’s strange,” said Cas. “This somehow feels more akin to flying than any airplane, but it’s still—it’s very human.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

“It isn’t what I expected.”

“Is anything?” Cas was silent. “You’ve got this. You’ll get the rest.”


End file.
